


Brooklyn in Winter

by OddKid42



Category: Before Watchmen (Comics), Watchmen (Comic), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lesbians, Mentor Fic, Silhouettte lives AU, in which Walter and Ursula form the trenchcoat and fedora union of crimefighters, older child adoption, the movie's nurse is a Gretchen stand-in btw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25215754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddKid42/pseuds/OddKid42
Summary: AU where Silhouette lives and decides to mentor the new, angry vigilante calling himself a psychological assessment and copying her costume design. Or, Walter finds himself adopted by two lesbians at twenty years old and the experience isn't entirely unbearable.
Relationships: Ursula Zandt/Gretchen, Walter Kovacs & Ursula Zandt
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I know Walter became a vigilante at twenty-four, but I thought it would need a longer, more detailed timeline the older he is when he meets Ursula. Besides, he left Charlton Home at sixteen (Who lets a kid live by himself at sixteen?), so I think it isn’t too out of canon to imagine that after four years of living in a crap apartment, sewing bras, and realizing there is no economic upward mobility for him, he would become a hero early.  
> Inspiration from faewrite on Tumblr because I read the idea of Ursula and Gretchen being to Walter what Hollis Mason was to Dan, and went 'oh crap, Walter needs two moms and Ursula would definitively look at this scrawny twenty year old in a trench coat and feel the urge to forceably mentor this kid'.  
> Big heads up that because this is Silhouette and Walter, child abuse and protecting children are prominent topics. I will give more details at the start of each chapter, but Silhouette's entire career is hunting abusers.  
> Warning: Description of someone getting shot, no graphic details but implied

The hotel door rattled momentarily, someone attempting to open the locked door, before it went quiet. There was a faint scraping sound as the locks were picked then the click as the lock released. The lights of the hallway broke a sliver of illumination into the hotel room where the two women were staying-- a long-deserved vacation for the heroine and her long-term partner and one brought on by the discover of their relationship. 

The ejection of Silhouette from the Minutemen had been a blessing in a way. The Silhouette had long felt disconnected from the group with its striving towards publicity while she had focused her attention on ending child trafficking in her adopted city. Gretchen had been wanting her to leave since interactions with the other members began to irritate her without any benefits. The only person she did seem to care for, or have any sense of comrodery with, was Night Owl. Even he seemed to view her goal as sainthood rather than the disturbing reality that the problem existed in the first place. Stepping away from New York City for a vacation, it was long needed. It was meant to be relaxing. 

The Liquidator-- a third-rate villain, simply a trafficker who imagined grandness in himself enough to purchase a costume-- eased open the hotel door with gun in hand. Too many time Silhouette had ruined his empire. The announcement of her identity in the news made it easy to track her down to the hotel along the beach, and he planned to end the nuance of her. Gain notoriety in killing her. He imagined there was little she would be able to do, out of costume and asleep with her guard down. 

Something broke through his skull, and he found himself on the carpet. It was the hallway carpet, waterstained and dirty. Somewhere a woman was screaming. It stopped. Some movement and then a black-haired woman stood next to his head. A handgun was pointed at his face. There were enough synapses firing in the remnants of his brain to recognize her as Silhouette in a nightgown. She was frowning down at him like he was a mild irritation. Some sensation from his hand and he realized she had kicked the gun behind her. 

He couldn’t move. She sighed and stopped pointing the gun at him to his relief. She brushed hair out of her eyes and looked behind her. “Babe, can you get Mason on the phone please? I think we are going home early.” 

There were other patrons leaving their hotel rooms, noise as they exclaimed at the sight of him. He didn’t know what he looked like, but the attention was good. Someone would arrest her. She would go to jail. For any number of reasons-- the homosexuality, the firearm, the attempted murder of him. He said as much as well as he was able. 

Silhouette stared down at him before a small smile appeared on her face. It was cold and filled with bloodlust. She squatted next to his head, and he felt the rising fear that she would kill him with her hands. 

“You know.” Her voice was quiet but enough for him to hear. “No one cares about you-- people who hurt children. You are more dog than a man, and dogs are put down when they hurt people. So don’t worry. If you don’t die before the ambulance comes, I will find you before the police.” 

She stood and returned to the hotel room where Gretchen was on the phone with Hollis Mason. The Liquidator died in the hallway that night while vacationers watched. No one helped.


	2. I.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up: brief description Ursula's sister's murder and Nazi mention but no graphic details

Rorschach, twenty years old and angry, lashed out at the Top Knots surrounding him; blind in his fury, fists aimed for noses, kicks aimed at kneecaps, growling and grunting with each blow given and received. 

The flurry of enclosed movement around him refused to dissipate, and the opposing blows that landed only incensed him further because they were scum, scum that would hurt someone who could not fight back if he didn’t stop them. They always did. They always went for the weak who had no chance of stopping them, so Rorschach doled out violence into the crowd even if he didn’t recall how many there were at the start, how many had fallen, and how many had joined. 

In the corner of his vision as he fought, he could see a few members drop back. He marked the opened space in his mind but didn’t dwell on it. Catching a swung crowbar towards his head in a gloved grip, kicking the punk behind him, returning to kick against the chest of the wielder even with a fist against the side of his face (another flash of fury because it would swell and his coworkers will think he got in a brawl overnight, which he did but not like their husbands). 

The third- fourth man dropped behind him in his distraction. He half-turned and spotted the black trench coat before he pressed forward to haul an arm back and crunch the nose of the last man. He didn’t waste time and began to zip-tie the arms of injured and unconscious thugs. 

Silhouette plucked the cigarette from her mouth. The words came out in smoke. “You are new.” 

He kicked the stomach of a gang member trying to lift himself off the ground. He handcuffed the man’s hands with his foot planted on the escapee’s back. He said with the rough pitch he had been practicing, “Rorschach.” 

“Hm.” Silhouette flicked ash, indifferent. “How long as mask?” 

She was surveying the gang members, and Rorschach was irked by her inaction once the fighting had ended. Why jump into a fight and not clean up? 

He growled, “Not helping?” 

She watched him tie the last man, not bothering to resist, to piping along the way. “Not needed.” When he faced her, transmitting a glare, she visibly perked up upon seeing his mask. “Moving ink. Very nice.” 

Rorschach held himself cautiously. He knew that meeting Minutemen, those who remained active anyway, in person would be different than the idolizations of his youth, but Silhouette was never a favorite. Even less when she was voted out of the group for homosexual activity. He brushed away the acknowledgement of his uniform’s work. 

She set the cigarette on the side of her mouth again and shoved her hands into her trench coat pockets when he didn’t answer. “See you then. Or not. Most new quit. If you do not quit, good for you.” 

Their subsequent meetings over the next three months occurred similarly. 

Rorschach admitted to himself that he often became involved in more than he could handle at one time, but increasingly, she appeared from some corner to assist the moment the fight tipped out of his control. She would hover around long enough to check he was uninjured or throw a roll of gauze when he was before continuing wherever she was going. 

Initially, he wasn’t sure if her appearances were coincidental or intentional. As more months passed, he realized that she would find him within an hour of his patrol regardless of whichever direction he started off from in the Lower East Side and the times when she didn’t appear, the news (the liberal but factual correct one and his own _New Frontiersman_ ) would print a story about a child trafficking ring or another case of human sewage being destroyed. 

He didn’t rely on her for assistance, he told himself, but the newspaper articles eased frustrations when she wasn’t present the night before for a fight he nearly lost. He didn’t rely on her, but he left with fewer bruises when she was there. In the meantime, he learned to strategize on his own and time his approaches. 

  


“You stay out of child cases?” she asked after three months since they first met. 

His ears were ringing slightly from a cheap blow, but he had previously thought of the question: why hadn’t he run into her usual prey. “Haven’t found one.” 

“You don’t unless you look.” The reply was sharper than seemed directed towards only him. He tilted his head in question. She clarified, “Other Minutemen thought it not good for publicity. No one likes to know of it, so focused on gangs. Put blame on immigrants. Children-- only public can blame self for not protecting children.” 

He understood what she meant, about the public and the jobs left undone. The crimes left unseen because they were messy and thus untouchable. He replied, “Could join on your patrol.” 

She stood without speaking for several seconds before she said, “No. I don’t want you to. Still a child yourself.” 

He bristled. “ _Not_ a child. Offered for your convenience but do not care.” 

She smirked at him, but it faded quickly. “Appreciate the offer, but no. Child cases kill you. I asked to see if intentionally avoided. If you only play superhero or beat people for fun.” 

He wasn’t sure how she expected him to respond. He followed her to the next street. 

“Brooklyn cold in winter, yeah?” she asked. 

She didn’t usually make small talk. He nodded wordlessly. 

“Vienna, a bit warmer. Longitudinal differences.” She turned her head back, catching his eyes. “But evil people everywhere you go.” 

  


There was a comic book panel from the Night Owl memoir. An illustration of a black-haired girl at the bedside of a younger, blonde girl. It was inaccurate of what Silhouette had looked like. The illustration was wearing eyeliner and mascara, for one. He supposed that there was more empathy if she looked feminine. 

The illustration is of her as a sixteen year old caring for her younger sister. A sister who is tortured to death on the next page. A sister that the sixteen year old Silhouette kills Nazi guards to reach, only to find vivisected behind the door. 

_Child cases kill you._

Walter set the memoir back on the New York Public Library’s shelf, his memory confirmed of the illustration and description that he had read as a child. 

_You don’t unless you look._

He told himself that he didn’t need to seek the cases out any more than he sought out other crime. It was her department. He dealt with the violence in progress and drug dealers. The assaults and random, opportunistic crimes he found. He had recently started keeping records of fights to figure out patterns in organized crime (not solely because she did so as well, but like her fighting ability and detective skills, Walter was forced to admit that she had more experience and success in her cases). 

_Child cases kill you._

He knew his reasoning for not hunting child predators was lacking. To be honest with himself—he squared his shoulders against the winter wind as he left the brick building—and he tried to be, he didn’t want to see child abuse cases. He didn’t want to see the results if his mother had been more malicious or he stayed with her any longer. 

_Still a child._

Maybe. He was twenty, turning twenty-one in spring. Rorschach had no age, but Walter did. Early on, Silhouette had sensed how young he was behind the mask. Had pressed to confirm he was older than eighteen and had a source of income. 

He didn’t think there would be a significant jump between knowing child trafficking occurred, hearing the stories from _New Frontiersman_ , and seeing it, but she was would know. 

As much as it utterly pained him to admit it, she had been patrolling the city by herself before he had been born. Was more experienced. Each time she pointed something out that he argued against, he was later made to admit that she was right. The wordless glance towards him as she was proven right. 

Wait for the gang members to continue speaking and hear what names they drop. Do not rush in immediately to fight even if a few leave. Wait. Wait, Rorschach. Wait. Good, now we fight. Let’s go. 

Regardless of whether she would be proven correct about the gap between knowing and seeing, the tone seemed to imply that one day he would run into a child case and no longer be a child himself.


	3. II.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: d slur and canon-typical homophobic language/beliefs

He would prefer if she hadn’t noticed. The less mentioned of it the better, but after four months of appearing at random between fights (and worse, having one-sided conversations with him while he fought) to nosely involve herself in his patrol and despite his temper flaring at the intrusions, she started the argument.  


“Angry each time I light a cigarette.”  


He was conscious of the lit ember but pushed his observation of it to the corner of his mind. “Bad for health. Drug addiction. Air pollution.”  


She gave him an unimpressed look. “Didn’t know you cared, but none of your business.”  


“My business when you follow me,” he growled.  


“Kidsitting you. Kinderguarding.” She snorted a laugh at her own joke. “I am allowed to smoke.”  


Rorschach glared but knew she didn’t care. In a way that grated on the twenty year old’s pride, she could pin him down before a fight became a fight, so she ignored all of his complaints and ranting as blustery.  


There was no changing it. She would smoke next to him as they waited for a drug lord to appear, a cigarette posed between her lips, and he would hold back his discomfort behind gripes about health.

  


It was another part that he wished he could control: removing his mask for the first time. If he had been able, he would have never taken it off, but he became sick on patrol with her.  


He ignored the initial head fog, gritted his teeth through Silhouette’s proding looks. Compared to the colds that came on during work as a gradual weakness, this came faster, before he could get back to the apartment, and in front of someone who noticed.  


Silhouette watched him without additional commentary after he dismissed her but caught his shoulder when he misstepped on a landing. Before he could recover enough to be indignant, she had pulled off a glove and slipped fingers underneath the mask.  


“You have a fever. Go home, Rorschach,” she said firmly while he growled at the intrusion.  


He didn’t have the energy to protest, just the private relief that he had an excuse to precariously exit the rooftop and walk the winter night trek back to his apartment.  


He knew how to get back, but the streets were wrong. They didn’t lead to where he knew they went. The roads looked the same. After too long walking, he rested against an alley wall and accepted that he was sick enough to have become lost. He tried to think, with his mind fogged, what to do. He didn’t have the energy to walk until he found the familiar route despite his inner vigilante ushering him on.  


He gave up and moved deeper into the alley. He curled against the backend of the dumpster with cardboard as an added layer on top of him and hunkered down until the daylight returned or he recovered enough strength to find the route back.  


He couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but Silhouette was crouched in front of him. She had shaken his shoulder and said something.  


“What?” He wasn’t sure where he was or why he felt disoriented. He hadn’t deepened his voice. He was being pulled upright. She had his arm around her shoulders and was lifting him to his feet.  


“Can you walk?”  


She was moving too quickly. Even as they stood still, the ground was shaking unevenly, and he knew it was in his head and he had to get back to the apartment.  


She said something, and he managed to give a warning before falling into the blurred haze.  


He surfaced again in a taxi smelling of piss. The windows were clouded from the body heat in the car. His mask was off. The black-haired woman holding his shoulders was arguing with the driver. “He is not dirtying the car.”  


“He smells like trash!”  


She growled and shuffled through her trouser pockets. It was a familiar sound.  


“You took my mask.” He sounded childish and weak in his own ears. He was still hunched over. He had deepened his voice at least.  


“Hush,” she said without gentleness. She handed a bill over with a curved number, 2 or 5, and the cab driver grumbled about cleaning the car but drove.  


The car’s sudden movements—speeding up suddenly and hitting the brakes, speeding up again—didn’t give him time to collect himself and protest. He rested his head against his knees and tried to keep the growing nausea down while his body hovered five feet above the taxi. He drifted through levels of awareness while Silhouette—the woman who didn’t speak but felt like her—gripped his shoulder.  


“Freckles, wake up. We are here.”  


He felt worse from the pinball stability of the taxi but forced himself to out of the vehicle to the driver’s angry shouts about his shoes on the seating. He landed onto a precarious balance of two feet. Once there, he threw up his pre-patrol meal of canned beans and sandwich bread while Silhouette kept him from falling. His nose was leaking snot now. He flushed with self-disgust as she firmly maneuvered him towards a small door next to a butchery.  


He managed some resistance. “Not my apartment.”  


She stopped on the sidewalk for him. “I know. It’s mine. You could not find your apartment.” She pulled slightly to continue forwards, but he braced his feet. She growled and checked the area for pedestrians. She said under her breath, “Rorschach, you think I want you in my home? With my wife? No. But you dying in a gutter is worse than me losing privacy, so walk, idiot. I will take care of you until better.”  


He could get in another cab, the inner voice growled.  


He could barely stand.  


He set a hand on Silhouette’s shoulder in silence, and she patiently took time for his dizzy spells to pass or for him to push a series of steps on the stairwell before they reached the second floor of the building.  


“Keep standing. Try, Rorsch,” she urged as she rattled a key into the door lock. He couldn’t. His vision was closing in with rings. Sinking through the floor and vibrating. He could feel himself sagging in her grip. He said something to warn her, and she said something back. He half-woke to find himself lying in a bed. It was in a darkened room. With that assurance, he passed out again.  


When he blinked awake, light from a window was filtering in. He could feel the cotton sheets and blankets over his arms and legs; cool except for the barrier his tank top and boxers gave.  


The woman asleep next to the bed stopped him from immediately escaping. She was in a wooden chair at the foot of the bed, arms crossed in her lap, and head resting on the sheets. Her features—short, black hair; unplucked eyebrows; faint scent of cigarette smoke—seemed familiar in a disconnected way. He realized with a jolt that the woman was Silhouette. He mentally matched the face and uniform, and he found that it fit.  


Teetering between disturbed curiosity and a sense of violation, he studied the room and begrudgingly found it sensible. Not decorous but not impoverished of furniture. A window wide enough to slip through with a fire escape outside was next to the bed, and Rorschach recognized it as a likely exit from the room.  


He could feel that he only had temporary energy. His mind was clearer compared to last night, but he felt the weakness of his body shutting down. It didn’t matter. At minimum, he needed to reach work. 

Likely, he was already late.  


He pushed himself up against the headboard, and the bed creaked marginally. The woman—Silhouette—inhaled deeply and frowned. Rorschach recollected his anger as she sat up, wiping at her eyes.  


“Took my mask.”  


She squinted at him, one eye still closed and face skewed like he was an annoyance. “Fainted.” She ignored his discomfort at the reminder of last night to study him. “Was it exhaustion?”  


He didn’t answer, so she stood and set a hand against his forehead with a concentrated look. He protested and tried to lean far enough away, but she held her palm against his head for several seconds.  


“Fever,” she stated and settled down again in the seat. “What are the other symptoms?”  


“Leaving.” He shifted before remembering his lack of clothing and glared at her. “Clothes, Silhouette.”  


She reached down for a newspaper and answered as she folded it out, “Not leaving, Freckles. You are sick. Was in the alleyway asleep.” She looked over the newspaper and pierced him suddenly with a scrutiny usually reserved for suspicious strangers. “Are you homeless?”  


“No.”  


The scrutiny lessened. “Why sleep in alleyway? Followed and didn’t notice me. Could have been killed.”  


There wasn’t an acceptable reply for how weak he felt last night. He couldn’t stay in her house. He had work at nine o’clock. He eyed the dressers and wondered if, assuming this was her room, a pair of her trousers would fit him.  


“Rorschach.”  


He focused back on her and the dangerous look in her eye, feeling caught for having the perverted idea of wearing her clothing. She said firmly, “I promised last night nothing bad would happen and meant it. Stay.”  


The phrase only brought vague memories of being carried with his head against her should. Being set into bed with her voice and another woman’s. He couldn’t remember details. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember details. It bothered him that the longer he spoke with her the more disconnected his body felt from him and likely remaining became.  


He didn’t look to the window, but its presence was there. The woman called Silhouette frowned in disappointment at him. “If you try to leave, I will not mentor you anymore.”  


In that moment, he hated her as intensely as he hated anyone. He wanted to spit back that he didn’t even want her for a mentor. Whore, slut, lesbian bitch dyke. She followed him around. She was the one who wanted to mentor him with her screaming cigarettes, and the image of the cigarettes being put out on him, on another boy’s eye surfaced suddenly. His mother’s corpse with Draino burning down her throat and how much it must have hurt. How deserved the death seemed. How he had felt vindicated at hurting others who hurt him.  


Mixture of violence and shame caught in his throat with the words almost said, and he glanced away to school his expression because Silhouette was looking at him with something he didn’t recognize. Her frustration had faded into it. He self-consciously tried to calm himself with deep breaths--the Charlton school’s psychologist had given general anger management information that he used without accepting his need for it--and felt the countering shame of losing his temper over what was likely an empty threat. A threat, from her perspective, meant to keep him from running away and becoming lost again. For her to keep him safe until he had recovered. Even if he hated the situation and the memories it brought, she had never hurt him. She had proven repeatedly that she wouldn’t.  


She exhaled and ran a hand through her hair, the movement catching his attention. Her brows furrowed together. When she set her hand down, she looked tired. “What was that towards?”  


He couldn’t answer. He didn’t know. Sometimes, he was so angry.  


She stood and frowned at something out the window. He thought for a moment she would tell him to get out of her house.  


She walked to the door. “I’ll cook. Get some sleep.”  


The door creeped closed a bit after she left, but he could see the doorframe of another room diagonal. After a moment, metal clangs of pots moving came from another room.  


He surrendered, accepting whatever care that she felt to provide as punishment. He moved back underneath the weight of the quilts and shivered from the earlier exposure to the air. The rough internal monologue that he was starting to label as his persona was indignant at the treatment, but he closed his stinging eyes. He was disgusted at himself for losing his temper so easily. Losing it towards her.  


Who had been providing advice to him for the past four months? Had he not spent his working time in the factory replaying her movements in fights--smaller frame dodging a punch and retaliating rather than taking it, moving light on your feet, identifying improvised weapons, how to use your shorter stature to your advantage. He never had to ask her for tactics; she provided them when she noticed his imperfect replication. She taught him the city from the perspective of their prey. The docks for drug exchanges. Meat-packing district for homicides. The network of human trafficking that involves finding one thread to pull information on the rest. How to find the thread throughout the city and not miss it when you had a suspect at your mercy.  


She provided safety. Young masks were killed entering fights that they couldn’t win. For the sake of laying down their lives for a cause. Or simply because they thought of themselves as invincible. She kept him in check. As insulted as he felt at the low status, under the mentorship of a well-known lesbian, she gave him cases for practice and would reconvene with him at daybreak for the report. The feedback was always useful even as he begrudging accepted it.  


It was rare--she didn’t give them often--but her praise had become its own form of incentive. The mask persona felt insulted and Walter knew it was meaningless, but the praise felt good. Whole body radiating good. In the middle of sewing padding into brassieres—feeling humiliated at touching something that would later touch an anonymous woman’s breast—he would suddenly remember Silhoutte’s lips quirking up and her ‘good job, Rorsch’. The praise of his mask—it was a symbol, made from the dress of a young woman assaulted and murdered while her neighbors did nothing but watch. It wasn’t meant for praise. But it was his work, the first piece he had made at eighteen when he was beginning to lose the optimism that the brassiere job was a temporary step towards a professional job. When he understood the impact of Charlton House on a job application. She had been impressed on the first night. Saw his work before seeing him.  


He woke up to a bowl of soup set next to him. He couldn’t remember falling asleep. Silhouette was not in the room. He reached out from the covers, shivering in the cold air, and found the bowl warm. He searched the room for Silhouette again before sitting up and devouring the soup, forgoing the spoon for speed.  


It was potato chowder. It was probably from a can, but it was one of the better meals he had eaten in awhile.  


After he had scooped the last bits out, he set the bowl down and rested underneath the quilts again. The sheets smelled a bit like cigarettes but also something floral. His eyes were burning, and he closed them for what he planned to be brief. Long enough for his eyes to stop stinging. The warmth and weight of food in his stomach and the quiet of the apartment. Smell of tobacco and rose on the clean sheets.  


He blinked awake and had the sense that hours had passed, but he wasn’t sure how many. He had a terrible, throbbing headache at the front of his skull. He noticed the back of Silhouette’s head level to the bed. He shifted to see spread out maps and scraps of paper across the floor. Clipped pictures of children from the papers. _Have You Seen Me?_ and _Last Seen_.  


“It is four o’clock.” She lifted her head, and he followed her focus to the metallic clock on the dresser. She corrected herself, “4:14.”  


His legs and arms were aching like he had spent the night running, and he silently stretched them under the covers to relieve the cramps. He tried to think of what to say and found little besides the pounding in his skull. Silhouette was turned partially towards him.  


“Do you feel better?”  


The leg cramps were better than the disorientation. The headache wasn’t a migraine, so he nodded. He wondered if he should thank her, but they didn’t thank each other for things. Typically, the routine of patrol made the protection of each other necessary. He wasn’t sure how being cared for as a civilian would change their- what they did.  


He was likely fired from his job for not appearing, and it sent a chill through him because he had no other job options. The brassiere manufacturer had been arranged by the Charlton Home. It was also a sense of relief that he no longer had to feel perverted touching women’s underwear, but he needed a job.  


The air was cold, which he understood was a symptom of his sickness. He pulled the covers over his neck rather than shiver for the sake of sitting upright in bed. The embarrassment of huddling like a child under the sheets felt deserved after the morning’s incident. Had he apologized for it? No, he didn’t think he had.  


He swallowed his pride and reminded himself that his embarrassment was deserved. “Hrm, I’m… I apologize- for this morning. Sorry. Shouldn’t have…”  


Silhouette was staring at him blankly. “Ah.” She glanced back at the papers. “It doesn’t matter.”  


“I…” Walter averted his eyes to the clothing dresser and stopped trying to use the deeper growl of his costumed voice. “It does.”  


“You didn’t leave. Still my apprentice.” She returned to her papers. Walter closed his eyes that were burning irritatedly and stretched his arms out to either side of him. Silhouette jarred him slightly when she spoke again. “My lover returns at five o’clock.”  


Walter tried to process whom she meant before realizing it was the woman she was kicked out of Minutemen for.  


Was it the same woman? Unlikely. Silhouette was kicked out when he was four years old. It being the same woman was not likely. _New Frontiersman_ said that homosexuals could not maintain long-term relationships. Too much shame and secrecy present. But, at what point does a woman become a lover to another woman? Is there a time period? After a year, a girlfriend becomes a lover? Is lover the word for wife for lesbians since they cannot marry? Or is it that the masculine woman is a dyke and the feminine one is a lover?  


“Rorschach.” He blinked his eyes open again. Her expression had shifted to faint amusement around her eyes and corner of her lips. “What are thinking of?”  


It was her house. He did not want to offend even if he was been kept against his will. But, the word ‘lover’ bothered him. Beyond the unclear qualifier, it brought the image of his mother. Of a woman in halters roaming the hallway, watching him sleep with eyes not fully present, letting men touch him. If that was a lover, some sexual miscreant, he couldn’t stay here with it present.  


He asked, careful of his tone, “Is she the same one you were kicked out of Minutemen for?”  


The expression shifted in a way Walter was not sure about. Multiple microexpressions. She said steadily, “Yes.”  


So, over sixteen years of… being together. Illegal relationship but at least not whorish. But then _Frontiersman_ was wrong? No, Silhouette tended towards exceptionalism in most traits. It was why he could stand to be around her.  


“Be nice to her.”  


The threat in the tone caught his attention. Walter blinked. The headache was not helping him think. “Your apartment.”  


Papers rustling. “Know how you think of lesbians but _cannot_ disrespect her.”  


Walter’s brain whorled in different directions, but he replied honestly, “I won’t. I don’t- I wouldn’t.”  


“I had to stop you being antisemitic.”  


Walter remembered the verbal stripping with a wince. Bringing up the idea of a secret Jewish bureaucracy running the city resulted in him being torn apart by her on all the reasons it was untrue, hurt ordinary people, and was a part of the blaming that allowed the Holocaust to occur, which Walter thought was a stretch but didn't feel particularly inclined to argue over when she was holding a gun.  


Silhouette sighed. Walter felt too fatigued to give a full explanation beyond, “Don’t know her.”  


“I have talked enough for her to know you.”  


Walter was not sure how to interpret the idea of the woman knowing him before he knew her, and Silhouette didn’t elaborate. The room was silent again except for the papers shifting. The afternoon sun was filtering in through the window, and he closed his eyes against the light.

  


“...other than Rorschach?”  


“I didn’t ask.” Silhouette’s voice approaching.  


“Ursula.” Slight disapproval and amusement.  


Floorboards creaking in the room. Walter teetered between falling back asleep and opening his eyes to identify the second voice. A hand was set against his forehead, but it was possibly Silhouette checking his temperature again. His head hurt too much to protest when he could criticize her for it later.  


“Fever.”  


Silhouette's short hum of acknowledgement.  


“How much fluid has he drank?”  


“Oh, uh. He ate the clam chowder.”  


“Ursula.” A short phrase in another language that sounds like German. The feet shifted and left the room.  


Walter was getting tired of the two voices and appreciated the moment of silence before the footsteps returned to the room. A cold, wet something was set against his forehead, and it was the obstructing cold that caused him to fumble to get it off and open his eyes to see who was assailing him.  


A blonde woman, lines underneath her eyes and face in moderate makeup, smiled at him. It didn’t feel flirtatious, but she set a hand on his to stop him from moving the washcloth off his forehead.  


“Sorry, but you need it. Your fever hasn’t broken.” She had a German accent. It was the second voice, and Walter had the disorienting moment of trying to figure out who this woman was and what she was trying to do to him before something nudged his foot.  


Silhouette was watching him, sitting at the foot of the bed where she had been reading the newspaper earlier. “You’re fine, Rorsch.”  


The anxiety lessened until the stranger ran her hand through his hair with a frown. “He hasn’t bathed, Sila. Has he been too weak to use the restroom?”  


“Ah, he doesn’t like touching. Or bathing,” Silhouette spoke before Walter lost his composure enough to forcefully push her off of him. He sat up and moved away from the women.  


The blonde woman stepped back. The smile was warm and apologetic. “Bad first impression then. I apologize. My name is Gretchen.”  


Walter looked to Silhouette silently, and she seemed to understand enough in the expression to stand up from the bedside. “Gretchen, switch with me.”  


Gretchen seemed more curious than insulted and took Silouhette’s spot at the foot of the bed while Silhouette sat on the bed with her back against the headboard. She tucked her legs underneath her. “Pull the blankets up, or you will start shaking again.” She wasn’t looking at Walter, and Gretchen observed her for a moment before focusing on the window.  


When Walter had pulled a quilt around himself and recovered enough from the sudden overload of two people surrounding him, Silhouette glanced him over. He met her glaze, and she nodded. “Rorschach, she is Gretchen. Gretchen, he is Rorschach. Doesn’t matter, but my other name is Ursula Zandt.”  


He gave a stilted nod to the woman, Gretchen, who was looking at him kindly. Ursula-- he accepted that the civilian name fit the woman who was his mentor. It was a name without attraction in his mind.-- seemed to glance him over. “I should have woken you when she got home. Are you hungry?”  


“No.” His nose was blocked completely, and the answer sounded congested.  


“More soup?” Ursula’s eyes up close were a kaleidoscope of brown and green shards. It was overwhelming. Walter searched for something else to look at and reluctantly looked to Gretchen. The woman smiled reassuring at the scrutiny. “I could make the cure-all chicken soup. He needs the fluids.”  


Ursula made a noise like uncertainty. It was the noise to indicate when she wasn’t sure if something Rorschach had said was right. “If you don’t mind. May help.”  


“I don’t mind. Will be done in an hour.” She brushed the dress of wrinkles as she stood and left the room.  


The bedroom was silent as Walter and Ursula both listened to Gretchen move around in the kitchen. The quiet din of pots being moved and the faucet being turned on. Ursula shifted and took a glass of water from the bedside table that Walter hadn’t noticed was there. She held it towards him without any urgency. “Sorry. Forgot about liquids.”  


Walter checked there was no discoloration in the water-- it sometimes happened at his apartment complex. The city would have to flush the pipes, and he would go without running water for a few days-- and untucked an arm from the sheets and quilt to accept it. He politely took a sip and realized he was, in fact, dehydrated. He tried to drain the glass as silently as possible while Ursula stared at the bedroom door. He sat with the empty glass for a moment, and she glanced over and took it back. They sat in silence, uncertain what to do with each other when someone outside of their strange partnership was in the house.  


“I’m going to help her cook,” Ursula said when the silence began intolerable. She stood and walked out of the room, taking the glass with her. She returned a few moments later to sheepishly relay where the bathroom was in the apartment and set another full glass of water on the bedside table before disappearing again. Walter felt a measurement of relief that she was as uncomfortable with him being in the bed as he was. He drained the second glass of water and pulled the covers over his shoulders to regain warmth.

  


The soup tasted like garlic and onions with tender chicken pieces with bone floating in it. He drained the bowl and begrudging accepted an aspirin when Gretchen quizzed out the presence of the leg cramps.  


With Gretchen’s back turned, he could catch sight of Ursula’s smiles at her wife. When Gretchen eventually noticed his focus and followed his line of sight, Ursula ducked her head down to continue working on her journal and spread of city maps with marked routes. Gretchen smiled softly. “Long night?”  


“Potentially. Depends.” Silhouette straightened and shook the hair out of her eyes. “Are you-” She switched to German briefly.  


“Fine with me.” Gretchen turned to him. “Are you content staying the night again?”  


He could feel Ursula’s eyes on him, but he didn’t need the threat. He had lost the job at the factory, so another night would not damage him more. “Yes. But update me after.”  


Ursula released a short laugh but agreed. Her Austrian accent chipping over the ‘s’ in ‘of course’.  


Before she left through the window that night, she added, “If you still want to go patrol with me, I will bring you when you are better.”  


He could only nod, uncertain what changed her mind. He was worried that Gretchen would try to talk to him without Silhouette present, but he was relieved when she wished him good night and turned off the lamp shortly after Silhouette left.  


He woke up in the middle of the night with snot coating the pillowcase, the muscle soreness and fever gone, and the pressing need to urinate. He stumbled out of bed and checked the room adjacent the bedroom for a toliet, which proved to be correct. With the urgency done, he glanced down the hallway in the gray light. He could only see the kitchen pans hanging from a rack along the ceiling and a kitchen counter. He walked down the tiled hallway cautiously and noticed a figure lying on a couch. He realized it was Gretchen, and by default, he was on the only bed in the house. He glanced back to the bedroom but hesitated in waking her up to change locations even if he was no longer sick. She was likely to refuse the return of her bed. Worse, she might fuss over him again and Silhouette was gone.  


He surveyed the living room and kitchen from where he stood. It looked less like a den of vice and more tidy normalcy. He felt relieved and underwhelmed at the residency of lesbians. New Frontiersman’s information was proving faulty about the group. He checked that the woman was still asleep and not likely to stick washcloths against his head before he returned to the bedroom.  


As he settled back into bed again, he decided to stay until dawn out of obligation to alert Silhouette when she returned from patrol that she no longer needed to host him. Then, in what he was sensing as a pattern with disappointment at himself, he dozed off in the bed waiting for her and woke to the noise of her climbing into the room feet first from the fire escape window. She stiffly asked for an hour to shower before speaking with him.  


He sensed that she had been unsuccessful in whomever she had been searching for. He spent the hour debating if it would restore her hesitation to take him on patrols. He didn’t get the chance to ask. She returned with Gretchen in a nightgown, who passed him a letter. He read it in the increasing light of dawn as it explained to whomever it may concern that he had been too ill to contact work about his absence and to excuse him. She had signed it ‘Dr. Gretchen Zandt’. After enduring a series of questions by Gretchen about symptoms, he found himself a few hours later back at the brasserie factory.  


A call to the phone number attached had been met with Gretchen’s voice, and Walter had stood in front of his supervisor awkwardly as Gretchen described over the phone finding him disoriented and treating him overnight in her clinic. He had received the confusing admonishment to take care of his health from the man and then told to get back to work. He wasn’t sure how to interpret the cover, but he told himself that at least he would not need to rely on them any further than he already had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ursula "I gave him soup. What else would he need?" versus Gretchen "Has he drank water? Taken medicine? Do you know his name?" versus Walter "This bed smells like lesbians. Let me sleep."


End file.
